Bloomberg jabs Obama's call for 'meaningful action'

12/14/12 4:10 PM EST

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't satisfied with President Obama's promise Friday to take "meaningful action" to prevent future mass shootings.

"[T]he country needs him to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem – and take immediate executive action," he said in a statement in his capacity as co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. "Calling for 'meaningful action' is not enough. We have heard that rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the president and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response. My deepest sympathies are with the families of all those affected, and my determination to stop this madness is stronger than ever."

"With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it's still almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen," Bloomberg said. "It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners learning their A,B,Cs are safe. We heard after Columbine that it was too soon to talk about gun laws. We heard it after Virginia Tech. After Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek. And now we are hearing it again. For every day we wait, 34 more people are murdered with guns. Today, many of them were five-year olds."

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Bloomberg's fellow co-chair, said he is "overcome with both grief and outrage" after the shooting and called for more to be done.

"As a mayor who has witnessed too many lives forever altered by gun violence, it is my responsibility to fight for action," he said. "Today’s tragedy reminds us that now is the time for action. Innocent children will now never attend a prom, never play in a big game, never step foot on a college campus. Now is the time for a national policy on guns that takes the loopholes out of the laws, the automatic weapons out of our neighborhoods and the tragedies like today out of our future.”